Our Approach

Our current global industrial food system is good for major corporations and bad for consumers, producers, and our planet. At Food Action, we are advocating and mobilizing for Good Food for all.

What is a food system?

The food system is the entire process around which food is grown and produced, processed, distributed, accessed, consumed, and disposed of. A food system operates within and is influenced by social, economic, and natural environments.

The food system includes the governance and economics of food production, as well as long-term sustainability and the ways that production affects the natural environment.

The food system affects equity, justice, health and well being, including worker’s rights and safety, hunger, nutrition, obesity, and food safety.

What does a "Whole Systems Approach" mean?

Food Action takes a whole systems approach to food change, bridging issues and sectors to bring a wide variety of actors and actions to the table. This means that we act as a facilitator and convener, bringing voices to the table to advocate for an equitable and sustainable food system across all aspects of the food system for the planet and people.

There is not one magic bullet or one single avenue to pursue that will make our food system better; instead we tackle the complex components of change collaboratively and collectively. In other words, for us, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

What is Good Food?

Good Food implies an interconnected system in which all the ways that food is grown, accessed, and enjoyed is good for the health of all people and of our planet. For us, there are three core tenants of Good Food: Health, Sustainability, and Justice.

Health

The current industrial food system promotes the consumption of highly processed and fast foods. These foods are calorie-rich and nutrition-poor and do little to nourish our individual and public health. These high-calorie and low-nutrition foods are leading to an obesity epidemic in which, for the first time in recorded history, children born in the US today face lower life expectancy rates than their parents. Alongside the health, social, and emotional costs of this epidemic, we are also paying an economic cost for bad food in our economy in terms of job loss and medical fees.

The current industrial food model relies on the heavy use of toxic chemical inputs (pesticides, fertilizers, etc.). Exposure to many of these agricultural inputs are linked to higher risks of adult diseases such as reduced fertility (particularly in men), immune suppression, and bladder, breast and other cancers. Toxic exposure is a risk to all of us as these inputs leach into our water systems. According to the USGS, at least 143 different pesticides and 21 transformation products have been found in ground water, including pesticides from every major chemical class. Cleanup of this contamination is costly and complex, if not impossible. Reliance on toxic agricultural inputs poses a particular risk for agricultural workers who are doing the spraying in the fields.

We promote strong, resilient and healthy food systems with food that is fresh, nutritious, and affordable, and that is produced without harm, and with care for the well-being of the land, workers, and animals.

Sustainability

Our dominant global industrial food system is overly reliant on fossil fuels for the global shipping of food products and the high use of chemical inputs such as pesticides and fertilizers. In addition to killing insects or weeds, pesticides are toxic to birds, fish, other beneficial insects, and other plants. Our reliance on chemical inputs in agriculture has led to the rise of Superweeds and an ever-increasing pesticide treadmill. In addition to being harmful for our planet, this model of food production is vulnerable to the severe weather effects of climate change.

We promote strong, resilient and healthy food systems with food that is fresh, nutritious, and affordable, and that is produced without harm, and with care for the well-being of the land, workers, and animals.

Justice

Our current industrial food model promotes the mass production of agri-business, creating challenges for small and family farms that practice alternative and sustainable production models, to compete. Farmland is being concentrated and consolidated into fewer and fewer hands, including high rates of ownership from absentee landlords. Farmworkers in industrial farms are systematically overworked and underpaid, with clear violations of labor rights and human rights. Animals are kept in confined conditions that do not take into account animal rights or animal welfare needs. The close confinement of animals for food production also leads to the overuse of antibiotics and concerns about the growth of antibiotic resistance and the disposal of animal waste.

Our food system is controlled by a small handful of major transnational agribusiness corporations. This model of subsidized corporate control has profound effects on the types of foods that are available for cheap consumption, and though it may appear that there are many choices in the grocery store major grocery store items are generally sourced by one of ten major food companies. The industrial food and agricultural sector spends hundreds of millions of dollars on communications efforts to spin the media, drive consumer behavior and advance its policy agenda.

We are fighting back!

We promote strong, resilient and healthy food systems with food that is fresh, nutritious, and affordable, and that is produced without harm, and with care for the well-being of the land, workers, and animals.